Healthfirst Teams Up with NowPow to Drive Better Health Outcomes for Members

Mar 11, 2019

New web-based tool will connect members to needed social services and community-based resources

NEW YORK, March 11, 2019 – Healthfirst, New York’s largest not-for-profit health insurer by revenue, announced today that it will be teaming up with NowPow to field a well-established and successful web-based tool to connect its nearly 1.4 million members to needed social services and community-based resources. NowPow, founded in 2015, uses a digital platform and data analytics to connect patients in under-resourced neighborhoods to nearby vital health and social services.

“This is an important investment on behalf of our members because social factors such as poverty, housing and access to food can negatively impact their health outcomes,” said Annette Cutrino, Healthfirst’s Vice President for Population Health Strategy. “It is widely recognized that tackling social determinants of health will improve individual and population health as well as advance health equity. Healthfirst is constantly evaluating new ways and tools to help meet member needs and drive better health outcomes. This tool will enable every interaction that Healthfirst has with a member to be an opportunity to connect them to needed services. It has already been successfully deployed to a Care Management team as a pilot, and we will be making it available to all member-facing teams in the near future.”

NowPow grew out of a population health initiative at the University of Chicago which was funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. To date, it has been responsible for millions of referrals. It is a web-based tool to connect members to services which will support their social needs, such as food pantries and free legal advice. The NowPow online directory has over 5,000 organizations providing 20,000 services across New York City and the surrounding region.